Erica about it was beyond him.
Of course, folks got carried away over junk all the time. If they didn’t, he’d be out of business.
People were weird, that was all. Some people had taste, some had credentials, some had serenity. Some danced around the room, cheering and hooting at the mere thought that a reporter as famous as Derrick Messinger had come to their boring little town. Some drank wine to take the edge off the lingering craving for nicotine. Some had beer for breakfast.
And some, like Erica, looked utterly bewildered, overwhelmed by what life had thrown at her, or, more accurately, laid beneath her shovel in her garden.
Lawyers. TV reporters. Erica was in for it, all right.
And Rockwell suddenly seemed more interesting to him than it ever had before.
CHAPTER SIX
A S EAGER AS F ERN had been to have dinner with Erica, she seemed just as eager to leave once she’d swallowed the last limp coil of rigatoni from her plate. The box from Erica’s garden had apparently slipped her mind.
Well, she hadn’t come to see the box. She’d come to see Jed Willetz. Erica refused to feel exploited because, after all, she’d gotten a delicious dinner out of the deal. The thing she couldn’t figure out, though, was why, with Jed sitting right in the same room, right at the same table, Fern had decided to depart so abruptly. She’d said something about having work to do, work tonight, work tomorrow, busy-busy-busy, and off she’d flown, leaving behind enough leftovers for two more pasta primavera dinners—or one more pasta primavera dinner for two, if Erica happened to find someone to have dinner with in the next several days.
She eyed Jed, then glanced away. She wasn’t going to be having dinner with him on a regular basis.
To be sure, she expected him to leave when Fern did. But he stuck around, carrying the dishes in from the dining room and lingering in the kitchen while she cleaned them. He didn’t say much, and neither did she. It was as if Fern had been the only one among them who knew how to sustain a conversation, and now that she’d abandoned them, Erica and Jed were floundering.
They’d had conversations before, though. They’dhad conversations during which Erica had been holding a knife, and other conversations during which she’d been unarmed. She wasn’t sure whether scrubbing the stickiness from a knife under a stream of steamy water counted as being armed, but while she washed the dishes Jed wandered lazily around the kitchen, scrutinizing the streaked enamel paint on the cabinet doors, studying the awkward arrangement of wires snaking out from the console of her cordless phone, peering through the dingy window in the back door, roaming the place as if it were his.
She liked having him in her kitchen. She didn’t object to his poking around, scanning the contents of her cabinets, resetting the clock on her cooking range so it was no longer three minutes slow. His presence made the room feel…different. The proximity of testosterone seemed to rearrange the air molecules in an exhilarating way.
She shook the excess water from the final plate and stacked it in the dish rack to dry. Now what? she wondered as she dried her hands on a paper towel. Was she supposed to entertain him? She couldn’t regale him the way Fern had, with updates on Stuart Farnham—“Remember how he sounded like an asthmatic horse when he laughed? Well, he still does”—or Cynthia Conklin—“She’s always getting brought in on traffic violations, and then the charges are dropped. She’s sleeping with the entire police force. Marty Nichols—he’s a sergeant now—says the joke around the station house is that she’s a case of ‘arrested development.’ I guess if you saw her bosom, you’d get the joke.”
True, Cynthia was well endowed, and she did seem to run red lights and stop signs with impunity. And Erica had heard Stuart Farnham snort and wheezewhen he laughed too hard. But she didn’t know these
Of course, folks got carried away over junk all the time. If they didn’t, he’d be out of business.
People were weird, that was all. Some people had taste, some had credentials, some had serenity. Some danced around the room, cheering and hooting at the mere thought that a reporter as famous as Derrick Messinger had come to their boring little town. Some drank wine to take the edge off the lingering craving for nicotine. Some had beer for breakfast.
And some, like Erica, looked utterly bewildered, overwhelmed by what life had thrown at her, or, more accurately, laid beneath her shovel in her garden.
Lawyers. TV reporters. Erica was in for it, all right.
And Rockwell suddenly seemed more interesting to him than it ever had before.
CHAPTER SIX
A S EAGER AS F ERN had been to have dinner with Erica, she seemed just as eager to leave once she’d swallowed the last limp coil of rigatoni from her plate. The box from Erica’s garden had apparently slipped her mind.
Well, she hadn’t come to see the box. She’d come to see Jed Willetz. Erica refused to feel exploited because, after all, she’d gotten a delicious dinner out of the deal. The thing she couldn’t figure out, though, was why, with Jed sitting right in the same room, right at the same table, Fern had decided to depart so abruptly. She’d said something about having work to do, work tonight, work tomorrow, busy-busy-busy, and off she’d flown, leaving behind enough leftovers for two more pasta primavera dinners—or one more pasta primavera dinner for two, if Erica happened to find someone to have dinner with in the next several days.
She eyed Jed, then glanced away. She wasn’t going to be having dinner with him on a regular basis.
To be sure, she expected him to leave when Fern did. But he stuck around, carrying the dishes in from the dining room and lingering in the kitchen while she cleaned them. He didn’t say much, and neither did she. It was as if Fern had been the only one among them who knew how to sustain a conversation, and now that she’d abandoned them, Erica and Jed were floundering.
They’d had conversations before, though. They’dhad conversations during which Erica had been holding a knife, and other conversations during which she’d been unarmed. She wasn’t sure whether scrubbing the stickiness from a knife under a stream of steamy water counted as being armed, but while she washed the dishes Jed wandered lazily around the kitchen, scrutinizing the streaked enamel paint on the cabinet doors, studying the awkward arrangement of wires snaking out from the console of her cordless phone, peering through the dingy window in the back door, roaming the place as if it were his.
She liked having him in her kitchen. She didn’t object to his poking around, scanning the contents of her cabinets, resetting the clock on her cooking range so it was no longer three minutes slow. His presence made the room feel…different. The proximity of testosterone seemed to rearrange the air molecules in an exhilarating way.
She shook the excess water from the final plate and stacked it in the dish rack to dry. Now what? she wondered as she dried her hands on a paper towel. Was she supposed to entertain him? She couldn’t regale him the way Fern had, with updates on Stuart Farnham—“Remember how he sounded like an asthmatic horse when he laughed? Well, he still does”—or Cynthia Conklin—“She’s always getting brought in on traffic violations, and then the charges are dropped. She’s sleeping with the entire police force. Marty Nichols—he’s a sergeant now—says the joke around the station house is that she’s a case of ‘arrested development.’ I guess if you saw her bosom, you’d get the joke.”
True, Cynthia was well endowed, and she did seem to run red lights and stop signs with impunity. And Erica had heard Stuart Farnham snort and wheezewhen he laughed too hard. But she didn’t know these
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